About thirty years ago (I'm not really as old as that sounds - yikes), I worked at a camp in Canada, for a summer. I was on the maintenance crew and did some events with the kids that were at the camp. I had a great summer and enjoyed the work. It gave me a chance to mature as an early teen and to learn better how to work hard and have diligence. It shaped my character as an important experience in life would.
At one point in the summer, I had to help unload a trailer and then unhitch it from a truck. Once the trailer was unloaded, I was left to unhook it and move it a little ways away from the truck. I got it unhooked and began to move it and lost my grip - it was a pretty large trailer. The trailer hitch fell directly on the top knuckle of my big right toe. It hurt. I was in a bunch of pain and tried to be tough. Someone called the camp nurse to come over and look at it she bent down and checked it out and, of course, it was bruised and swollen, but fortunately, not broken. By the way, the camp nurse was gorgeous and she gave me a big hug (I immediately forgot about the toe pain and I was the envy of all the other teen boy workers).
My failure here was that I should have had someone else to help me, knowing the size of the trailer, and I should have made sure my foot was out of the way, if the trailer fell (common sense to me now).
The reason for this story today, is that because of that injury, my toe slowly developed arthritis and the the top of my toe began to have bone growth that has stiffened my toe to a point of having it surgically repaired today. Not a big surgery, but this toe has been a pain for years and it will likely still cause me some problems the rest of my life, even though I'm having it corrected. You see, fails sometimes have consequences that last a long time and raise up to bug you later in life.
You may have offended a person years ago, with what you said and they still dislike you. You hurt someone as a teen by how you treated them and they never recovered. You may have done something to yourself as a young person and the issues arise from it still. Failures from the past come up and you have to restore the relationship with a person or get over that failure from the past. You still may have some lingering effects, but you have to move on, after you've tried to get it right. It reminds me, also, that if you were careful, at first, then that failure wouldn't be holding on now.
Lessons Learned: Just like my toe will be more flexible, when you correct a past failure, you become better too.
Thoughts: What long ago failure do you need to correct?
By the way, surgery went well and the doctor said my flexibility will improve. Hope all is well.
ReplyDeletePraise the Lord for a successful surgery. Great blog about how things can linger, fester, and rear their ugly head much later on. Praying for a speedy recovery.
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